Watergate scandal

The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal that occurred in the United States during the 1970s, starting with the 17 June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington DC and resulting in the resignation of President Richard Nixon and the imprisonment of many of his operatives. The scandal began when the five "White House Plumbers" - Nixon's secret operations squad - was caught while breaking into the DNC headquarters. The Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were assigned to the case, and they discovered that burglar James W. McCord, Jr. was a former CIA agent. They were later able to access the bank accounts of the burglars in Florida, drawing a connection to Kenneth H. Dahlberg, a member of Nixon's re-election committee, CREEP. They soon found that the web of conspirators reached the top levels of the Republican Party, implicating White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman and Attorney General John N. Mitchell in the use of slush funds, Donald Segretti's involvement in "ratfucking" smear campaigns against the Democratic Party, and the President himself in attempting to obstruct justice by taping his conversations and by pressuring the CIA to interfere with the FBI investigation. On 24 July 1974, the US Supreme Court decided that Nixon had to release his recorded tapes, including the "Smoking Gun Tape", which revealed Nixon's manipulation of the CIA to work against the FBI. Nixon faced nearly certain impeachment in the US Congress, so he resigned on 9 August 1974. His successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him on 8 September 1974, costing Ford re-election in 1976.

Watergate had a profound impact on American culture and society. The American people no longer had faith in their government, and they began to focus on their personal interests instead of the national interest; this led to the 1980s becoming known as the "decade of excess" for the hedonistic and carefree "Me generation". The Republican Party lost heavily in the United States presidential election, 1976 as the result of Watergate, but it would see a resurgence under Ronald Reagan in 1980 as the result of the foreign policy failures of President Jimmy Carter and his Democratic Party administration. Since the scandal, the suffix "-gate" has frequently been used to describe major scandals.